My two year old son has developed a habit of doing impromptu status checks whenever he has an accident. He’ll stumble and fall down, for instance, not hard enough to make him cry, and ask “OK?” Translation: “Am I OK, Daddy?” His mother or I will always reassure him, “Yes, you’re OK.”

It struck me recently that this most fundamental of human desires follows us through life, in one form or another. Deep down, all of us, at one time or another, want nothing more than to be told that we’re OK. That everything will be all right. I feel safe asserting that if you’re human, you’ve felt like this at least once in your life.

What it really comes down to is a question of positive reinforcement. The need for positive reinforcement is particularly strong when you’re pursuing a career in the arts–or any goal that falls outside the mainstream American view of what constitutes an acceptable, “real” job.

Writers of fiction are a solitary lot by nature, particularly in this country, where the usefulness and relevance of any artistic pursuit is judged primarily by its profit margin. As such, it’s a brave decision to write, and to seek publication for what you’ve written.

The traditional publishing process, then, is ironically sadistic, as it requires of the aspiring author the complete opposite: a pathological resistance to rejection that borders on the inhuman.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a writer, an aspiring writer, or associated with the publishing industry in some way, and you undoubtedly know what I’m talking about.

Under the agency model of publishing, literary agents and the editors at established publishing houses are the gatekeepers to publication. They are highly selective, often to the point of absurdity, and not, generally, in a way that makes any sense. How do I know this? I know this because I’ve submitted work and dealt with agents and editors myself. But more importantly, I know this because of observation and logic. Agents hold the keys to publishing because of their supposed expertise about what is good literature and, more importantly, what will sell–except there are endless examples of great, hugely popular, world-changing books that only got published in spite of caustic rejections that completely undermined the writer’s work.

Moreover, there are books that are enormously successful that have no redeeming literary (or even grammatical) merit whatsoever, e.g., Fifty Shades of Grey. E.L. James got her book published because she marketed it effectively and worked very hard to get it out into the public sphere, and it filled a need people didn’t even know they had. The market was obviously in craving erotica at the time, and the rest is history.

The truth is, as much as agents and editors would like you to believe that they understand the literary marketplace and know better than you what sells and what doesn’t, they don’t. They might have access to data about what has soldin the past, but so do you, if you want to go look at it. An agent telling you they know by reading your book whether or not it will be successful if put to market is, quite frankly, having you on. Just as you would be wise to steer clear of any stock broker or investment banker that tells you he can predict the market, you would be equally advised to bring your work elsewhere if a literary agent says the same thing.

It’s important to note here that I’m not saying that literary agents are worthless, or that they don’t serve very important functions: the good ones do understand a lot about how a book gets from manuscript to hardcover and can help you in some very important ways once you’re at a point that point. They may also be able to assist you in getting your foot in the door with an editor who might otherwise overlook your work.

That said, not all literary agents are created equal. Unlike other professional agents, such as sports agents or talent agents (who usually have advanced degrees in business or law, and who are required by law to be licensed in most states), your average literary agent is simply an English major who got a job as an assistant at a literary agency out of college. He or she may or may not have any more expertise than you do about what good writing is, how to improve it, and whether or not it’s likely to be find a home commercially. Good literary agents, of course, are very qualified to be doing what they’re doing, either through experience or education, but the really good ones (a) generally aren’t interested in you unless you’re already successful, and (b) may not actually be accepting unsolicited new submissions.

And those are just the good ones. I haven’t even mentioned all of the unqualified agents out there, the ones who have less experience agenting than you do writing, may never have successfully made a sale, and realistically have as much chance of getting you a lucrative book deal as you would by standing outside of a publisher’s office building with a sandwich board that reads “Please publish my novel.” Then there are the outright charlatans, the hucksters who are charging reading fees and pretending to get you a “book deal” when in reality they are having your book printed by way of one of many self-publishing channels available to anyone who wants to pay for it. These “agents” are the reason that websites like Writer Beware and Absolute Write Water Cooler exist. (If you are interested in how to identify a good agent, a good place to start is here: http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/.)

This is all a long-winded way of saying that if you’re looking for positive reinforcement from the traditional publishing industry, you’re not going to find it. What you’re going to find is rejection, more rejection, hostility, and still more rejection. The winners, the authors who get published, are the ones who persevere (or get lucky). This is all presuming you have some talent, of course. There are a lot of talented writers out there who simply don’t have the patience or the stomach to accept the kind of rejection that the industry dishes out.

We started Evil Toad Press with these problems in mind, and in a way, one thing we aim to do for aspiring writers is to reassure them that they are, indeed, “OK.” While our own imprint is currently not accepting submissions, we do offer consulting services for ambitious writers looking to self-publish because we see a need for experienced assistance and high-level service in this area.

Self-publishing is available to anyone who can pay for it, but that doesn’t mean it is an easy or simple process. Which is where Evil Toad Press’s self-publishing services come in. We worry about the publishing process for you, so you can sit back and write. In other words, so you can do what you actually want to do while knowing that everything is going to be OK.

6 thoughts on “I’m OK, You’re OK: Self-Publishing as Self-Direction”

I would amend this article by saying literary agents are worthless parasites who, simply put, profit hugely off the work of others. You could have said so much more about agents and the REAL comprehensive realities of their “industry” instead of a carefully groomed and selective reality. I’ll fill in the gaps, if you’ll permit me:

First off, you elided over the fact that a generation ago, publishers decided not to do their jobs anymore and essentially hired literary agents to do the slush pile scut work as a free weeding-out process. They told them, “We loath and revile authors so much, we choose not to deal directly with them, anymore. So, in exchange for being free editors, we’ll keep you on the playing field by refusing to look at mss unless they’re submitted by you.” Then agents, of course, were allowed to charge whatever they wanted for commissions and to this day, the going rate is 15%.

Secondly, as you said, agents don’t have to be licensed, degreed or even associated with the AAR and they get to masquerade their ignorance as absolute arbiters of literary taste or marketability. Many of them don’t even HAVE English degrees, meaning the lot of them are complete amateurs and won’t consider taking on a project unless it personally tickles their fancy, as if their personal taste (or what passes for one) represents that of the US reading public. Problem: Some agencies even admit on their websites that 90-95% of the adult fiction they take on never finds a home and year after year, decade after decade they keep blaming the “subjective nature” of the publishing business, never their incredibly and criminally faulty acumen. In light of a 90-95% failure rate, what’s called for is some objectivity and for editors to cease restricting their properties to whatever these morons submit to them. Name me one other business or business model in which a morbidly high 95% failure rate after several decades is preserved and even archly defended. In the real world, heads would literally roll in the cubicle farms.

Thirdly, you say that the “good” agents will deal only with established, successful authors or have closed their doors to the “prepublished” entirely without even telling us three things inherently wrong with this strategy. #A, authors will not live forever or will not stay profitable or even juicy forever. Authors die, retire, fall out of favor or go on to new pursuits. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye out for new talent but these assholes think doing so is a drain on their bottom lines. #B, part of the idea of making us go through literary agencies is so authors still have a place to submit their work. By slamming their doors in our faces, literary agents are blatantly violating the collusive deal made behind authors’ backs by their predecessors. The larger, snootier agencies think they’re too good for us and the smaller agencies have to be more selective and take on a few clients a year, if that. And finally #C, you never mentioned how craven and cowardly it is for the “good agents” to basically take a pass on anyone who isn’t the next best thing to a sure thing. There’s an agent, Andrew Wylie, a real scumbag who loves to poach authors from other agencies, represent estates and to shy away from original properties that don’t have a 100% chance of finding a home. Wylie is the stereotype of the cowardly agent who gets the dry heaves at taking a chance and tarnishing his sterling credibility despite most if not all agents failing up to 95% of the time.

In summation, literary agents are a pox on the publishing industry and seem bound and determined to do their level-headed best to destroy any vestige of literacy in this nation. They are stupid, ignorant, arrogant parasites who discard diamonds and polish turds who should all go the way of Harriet Wasserman. The very fact that I, one of the most brilliant and talented unpublished novelists in this nation’s history, don’t have an agent to this day and haven’t had one since 1997 shows how completely dysfunctional this part of the business model is.

@jurassicpork ZOMG I AGREE COMPLETELY!!! YES!!! YES!!! YES!!! I wrote a fairly scathing (to my mind) account of this phenomenon on my own blog but it did not come CLOSE to being this awesome. Everything you say is brilliant and I love your prose style.

Well said, jurassicpork. I didn’t want to seem elitist by harping on it too much, but one thing that does bother me a great deal is that these so-called “agents” are neither licensed nor educated for the job they do. This is particularly irritating to me, because I had to go to three years of professional school just to qualify to take the bar exam and represent people as an attorney (my primary career before becoming a writer and editor).

I also can’t stand that there are so many of them out there who hang out a shingle without having ever done the job before–interning at a literary agency doesn’t qualify you to negotiate contracts on behalf of authors! Nor does majoring in English and liking to read qualify you to be any kind of editor or give you any expertise on the writing process.

The thing that makes me crazy about literary agents (among, literally, a hundred other things) is that, after putting out their own shingle or going to work under someone else’s shingle, they then carp and complain about how there aren’t enough hours in the day and how many submissions they get a week (generally over 300), etc, and this is why i have to send you this form letter through my flunky.

Sorry, but we, too, work with large numbers. My last novel, TATTERDEMALION, got sent to literally over 220 different agents within a few weeks after I’d researched each agency, ensured myself they repped the genre in which it was written, obeyed submission guidelines to the letter and crossed all my “t’s” and dotted all my “i’s.”If you choose this life and career for yourself, don’t you dare complain to me about there not being enough hours in the day and why you have to resort to disrespectful form rejection letters to people who are plainly, like me, several cuts above the rest. They can devote up to 66% of their lives to their job. What we do, we do in our spare time in between visits to the dentist, garage, paying bills, work shifts and walking the dog.

But they’re still allowed to be self-dealing sociopaths who almost invariably say, “If you don’t hear from us in 6-8 weeks, we’ve decided to pass on your project.” Like, really? Fuck you.

I can understand the necessity of the boilerplate rejection letter. They reject 98% of what they get and often for good reasons. But when you get a perfectly spelled, punctuated and formatted query letter, an equally good synopsis and sample chapters of a kick-ass novel, when your submission guidelines are being met to the letter, when you’re personally addressed and even quoted off your website, when so much work obviously has been put into that book proposal, don’t you DARE disrespect my efforts and my talent by ignoring me or sending me a shitty “Dear Crawford” (I get those a lot) or “Dear author” letter or ignore me outright. That’s for the rubes. I’m not one of the rubes. And if these shitheads actually took the time to read my work, maybe they’d see that.

Or maybe they really are brain dead. Maybe it’s the tap water in the Four Seasons or something.